Starting with the 60-series models, the model number suffix denoted amplifier output power rating in watts. I believe the tube amplifiers were rated in peak watts, a very optimistic figure compared to continuous, or RMS, watts.

The 25-watt amplifier of the 70-25 had a microphone input, whereas the far more common 70-15's 15-watt amplifier did not.

That sure brings back memories of grade school in the 60s. Our school system used Kalart Victor projectors and I used to be the A/V monitor in any class I happened to be in. I remember some teachers used to put a huge loop between the lens and the sound drum and the audio would be all out of sync. That model pictured was probably from the 60s and not the 70s, the later models did away with the exposed belts to drive the reels.

Flingitman...I vaguely recall in the late 1970s - early '80s thumbing through A-V catalogs and seeing Kalart-Victor 70-series projectors still being offered, along with the bland, conventional 90-series slotloaders.

There was also an 80 series, essentially a 70 with a solid-state amplifier and quartz-halogen projection lamp. And then, of course, there's the slick but comparatively rare 75 series, maybe that's the one with the beltless reel arms you're thinking of?

I did a little more inspection on that machine without tearing it totally apart and I suspect this unit may have been built around 1976-77, based on date codes marked on one of the amplifier tubes and an electrolytic capacitor.

A neighbor near me had a pair of these but much earlier models. They were black and had pretty purple glowing tubes. He would fiddle with the (what I think was) voltage control to the photo cell and it would squeal and squawk.. Had that auto clutch devise if you lost a loop it would stop.

I lived for a while in Davenport, Iowa, home of the Victor Animatograph Company. One day while fetching the modern Eiki to show a film in class, I noticed a Victor projector in the corner, covered with dust. The old AV operator in me returned to check out the beast--clearly the weirdest 16mm projector I have ever encountered. The supply wheel goes in back, not the front. The film isn't in one flat plane; it is treaded behend the lens. The sound drum doesn't rotate. We won't even talk about rewinding. I thought that the Movie Mite was kind of strange until I encountered the Victor.

: Thank you for posting your recollections! I got to know these machines (specifically, the more common 70-15 model with a 15-watt amplifier) in junior high. Back then, I felt that if anyone could figure out a Victor — which I did, but not without its challenges (and getting involved in a fight with a meddlesome, bullying student over my first attempt) — they could figure out how to operate any 16mm projector, even those oddball left-hand threading machines like the Movie-Mite and the French Hortson theatrical pedestal projectors.

I love the style of this old school projector. It is so cool to see how much technology has advanced in the last one hundred years. I would love to go back and try to project things on a projector like this. I wonder what they will think of next.